Dream Book Clothing Edition

This week's Dream Book is filled with ideas to revamp clothing that you haven't worn in a while.  There are so many great and wonderful tutorials and ideas floating around blog land so I wanted to show you just a few of my favorites. 

Just like decorating I love finding an item in an overpriced store and recreating it myself for pennies on the dollar and this is just what Create and Delegate did.  She saw a tank at JCrew and did a  Ruffled Tank up herself.  So cute and so easy!

Welcome To The Good Life used inspiration from a sweater from Anthopologie and made an even cuter Ruffled Sweater for herself.

Over at I Make Stuff this talented gal was given some torn jeans and the freedom to do whatever she wanted for a friend of hers.  She took one pair of jeans and turned it into this Jeans to this Jean Skirt and then she took the other pair of jeans and dressed them up into these jeans.  How awesome is that!?!

And because I just love jean skirts then I thought you may too and wanted to show you another Jean Skirt done by Becky's Craft Closet.  The pattern ideas for doing one of these is just endless.

I'm so inspired to take some old clothes and dress them up and make them cute again, how about you?  Have you revamped some clothes and blogged about it?  Let me know and I'd love to add them to this Dream Book.

Happy Monday Ya'll.

Thursday's Tutorial - T-shirt Dress

Today's Tutorial is so stinking cute and although I wish I could say I did it, I can not.  It comes to us from Sumo's Sweet Stuff.  Have you been to her blog yet?  It is chalked full of well Sweet stuff like Tutorials, crafts, recipes, and more.  You must go by and tell her hi. 

She is going to show us how to make a t-shirt dress.  If you are around my age then you may remember wearing t-shirt dresses as a child and if you're like me the thought of that memory just scares the poo out of you, let's face it they weren't that cute, big hair, wacky fabric at the bottom and a wild colored t-shirt at top that probably had glitter fabric paint on it.  But this one is oh so precious that any little monkey would be excited to wear it. 

So Let's get started.

Here's what you need:

- t-shirt (mine was a $3.50 tank from Wal-Mart)

- fabric

- iron

- sewing machine/accessories

- buttons (optional)

You'll want to start off by using a dress your little girl already has for some measurements. For the body of the dress, you'll want to measure across the width, and then cut your width of fabric to be one and a half times that. As for the length, you'll just want to figure how long you want the dress to be, subtract how much shirt you are leaving, and there's your measurement for the length. If you are smart, use the fold of the fabric to cut this piece out. That saves you sewing a side. You can see that I was not smart.

For the ruffles, you'll want to make them as long as two times your width since you will be gathering them to make them ruffle. For the width, it just depends on how long your dress is going to be and how many different fabrics you are using. I needed five ruffles that would be about three and a half inches wide, so I cut them at four inches to account for seams. Again, use your fold! I got smart this time!

You'll want to pin the two right sides of your fabric for the body of the dress together and sew the seams. I used a 1/4" allowance.

Next I ironed a 1/4" on the bottom of the body and sewed it.

At the top of your body, do a gathering stitch by setting your stitch length to the longest length. Don't backstitch here! You'll need your thread ends nice and long so that you can pull.

After I did the body, I closed up one of the ruffles, ironed and hemmed it, and did the gathering stitch at the top. This was the ruffle I wanted to go first.

Next you are going to pin your ruffle, body, and half shirt together and sew a quarter inch seam.

Turn it right side out and top stitch.

Doesn't this look like a little 80's dress??

Then you're going to want to hem and gather all of your other ruffles. Here's a little pile of ruffles!

Then, measure the distance that you want between ruffles. Okay, I was living on the edge and just eyeballed it! Pin your ruffle down and sew it all the way around.

Then top stitch all the way around. Do this for all of your ruffles.

Looking good so far!

Then I decided that I wanted to put something on the sleeves of the tank. I traced a circle and cut it in half.

Then I ironed down the curved edge and sewed it....

And then did a gathering stitch to give it a bit of a ruffle.

Sew them on to the tank.

Make a cute flower and hand stitch it on.

Hand stitch on some buttons.

And you are done! A cute, unique dress!

I also made one out of a onesie for my baby.

Then put them on the cutest girls you know and admire your work!

How awesome are these?!  Please go tell her hi and browse around her blog and have fun making your own t-shirt dresses.

Happy Thursday Ya'll.

Thursday's Tutorial - Flowered Collar

Today I want to show you how to make this adorable ruffled flower collar which I added to Monkey's Easter Dress to jazz it up a bit.  I've gotten lots of emails requesting the how to so here you go!  Ask and you shall receive, my lovely readers!

You may have seen this already, I came across a picture of an A line dress with this type of collar and of course now can't find, story of my life.  I also can't find my uber cute sunglasses, my favorite flip flops, and my key card to get in my office after hours.  So please bear with my mommy brain for now.

I started out with a hand made A line dress, it came out cute but I wanted to do more to it.

Other Supplies Needed:
Scissors
Needle
Thread
Thimble
Material: For the material I'm using shot cotton in cream color (you want to use a light weight fabric)

Take your material and cut them in about strips.

Keeping the strips folded, cut half into 3 inch squares (you don't have to be exact with this) and the other half into 2 inch squares

Next trim the edges of your squares so that they are more rounded instead of pointed.

We are going to use a 2 inch square and a 3 inch square to make 1 flower.
So begin by taking your 2 inch square/circle and pinching it together at the bottom to form what looks like a flower.

Hold it in place with one hand and simply gather your 3 inch square around the one in your hand and pinch them together at the bottom and work with it until it forms a nice flower shape.

Stitch the 2 squares together to hold the flower in shape.
Continue this process until you have enough flowers for your project.  For this dress I used 20 flowers.

Now gather your dress or whatever you're attaching the flowers to and using your thread and needle and thimble start stitching them on in the pattern of choice.
Add some cute knickers to the dress and there you go!

Now put it on the nearest monkey and watch her be glamorized, messmorized, and accessorized!

These flowers would be cute added to just about anything, tank top, skirt, wreath, purse, shoes.  So have fun making you or your monkey these flowers to dress up with. 
And as always if you do this send me pics so I can showcase you.

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